Thursday, May 20, 2010

Have you ever worried that some kind of oversized insect race is going to take over the planet?

I'm going to go out on a limb, dear reader, and assume that you have. Because of course you have.

If you do happen to be one of the few people who have never had this concern, you're probably sitting at your computer, smirking. Oversized insects, you might be chuckling to yourself, what kind of stupid moron would believe that?

Well skeptics, I sure hope your microwave has a 'words' setting because you are about to be eating a certain few choice utterances.

Look at that beast. That's a moth. That thing that's covering it? A CD stacker dealie thing. I don't know what those things are supposed to be called, but the point is: that is a moth with a wingspan the size of a CD.

Let me tell you what happened here.

Vegatrain and I were sitting in the courtyard, minding our own business. Suddenly, we heard a frenzied flapping sound coming from the branches of the tree above us. At first, we ignored it. We're pretty used to the wildlife that frequents our courtyard, from the infamous Senator Mousington to the dreaded Drill Sergeant Jack Hornet.

But the flapping continued, getting more and more rabid and distracting.

"There's a bird caught in that branch," I said, squinting to see as far as I could into the tree.

It was dark and I had lost my glasses yet again, but I could just make out the movement of a pair of wings, fluttering around in clear distress. Worried that an innocent bird might be hurt, Vegatrain got up to see if he could find an appropriate tool for trying to free it.

It's a good thing he got up when he did.

Mere moments after he moved away from his seat, the creature in the tree suddenly plummeted to the table, inches from where Vegatrain had been sitting. It landed with a thud and lay motionsless, assumed by both of us to be dead.

Cautiously, we went to examine the body.

To our surprise (and horror), it wasn't a bird. It was a moth. A moth the size of a bird. And not a small bird either.

We put the first thing we could find that would fit on top of it, as caution generally seems like the best option when dealing with creatures that are clearly not of this world. But at least it was motionless. Dead. We were looking forward to palming it off to Meattrain for some hardcore dissection action.

But then, in a twist straight out of the opening scene of a B-grade monster movie, it came back to life.

It started flapping its wings. Just a bit at first, enough to let us know that it had woken up. But soon it came to realise that it had been trapped. Captured. Like a wild pokemon. It was not cool with that. It had forcefully freed itself from the tree, only to be captured by man. It flapped harder, becoming more and more agitated. At one point, I was sure it was going to blow the case right away. I kept my distance, watching it.

"Do we... do we kill it?" I asked.

And yes, maybe we should have killed it. Unfortunately for the world at large, we are both vegetarians and as such, are pussies when it comes to killing things. Especially when those things look like they could fight back.

So we let it go. Took it out the front of the house and released it back into the wild. Maybe we'll never know why it was so big, or how many of these creatures there are. Maybe it will breed with another insect, a spider for example, to create a race of creatures even more horrifying. Maybe those creatures will take over our government. Let's hope they at least have a decent tertiary education policy.

Maybe it's a coincidence that it turned up in the courtyard of our house, which also happens to be the residence of a certain (mad?) scientist, who just so happens to have a radiation licence and access to substances that most people will likely never even see.